


Out of Nothing, Everything

by sunburst



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Minor Character Death, Science Fiction, android mingyu, lonely musician jihoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24646186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunburst/pseuds/sunburst
Summary: The point of having ordered the Android was to have a housemate who wasn’t a human, who wouldn’t be an overgrown child who he would have to babysit, who wouldn’t get in his way, who wouldn’t want to have weird conversations about feelings.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 23
Kudos: 101





	1. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen 2 supersymmetry by arcade fire, genesis by grimes, out of nothing, everything by dan romer for full effect

“I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”

“Well, say something.”

“No.” 

Soonyoung threw a pillow at him. 

“You can’t keep moping around forever. It’s time, man. How long you gonna drag this shit out?”

Jihoon shook his head, stubborn to the very end. Time was passing slow and Soonyoung was overstaying his welcome. 

It started out fine, started out easy. Now he felt like saying, Soonyoung, who the hell sent you? Why do you care? 

Breathe through it. “Why should I have to talk to him? Why can’t he talk to me?”

His friend shifted around on the yellow sofa. Jihoon had ordered it in a pathetic attempt to bring some cheer to the sterile living room, still short of discovering that money, as of yet, could not quite buy happiness.

Soonyoung took another swig of his soju. “All I’m saying. It’s been, like, a year.”

“Whatever. I feel…inert. You know? Something about this house.”

“Yeah. If I lived alone in this place I’d be fucking sad too.”

Jihoon took a look around at what he knew he’d inevitably find— the floor-length windowed patio door, the weird sculptures that had already been installed when he’d bought the house, the tiny white chairs that were actually stuck to the ground. There was a fine layer of dust on everything because cleaning it would solidify the house as _his._ He’d bought it, yes. But he hated it all the same. He hated the living room. He hated his bedroom, with its weird perfectly rectangular bed, the squat Scandinavian furniture, the too-big window. 

Despite the rapidly growing gloom and grime, the whole house was still so white and bright that in the mornings he felt like wearing sunglasses. 

Truly the only room he liked was his studio, but even suggesting he had a studio in his house would be a direct temptation for Soonyoung to finagle his way into listening to his half-finished projects. That was a messy, revealing prospect.

So, the living room.

“I always wanted to live in a big house. I guess I didn’t know it’d be this fucking lonely, though.”

“Maybe, and I’m— this is _totally_ a shot in the dark— but maybe it’s not only the house.”

Jihoon said nothing. Took a sip of his Coke and grimaced.

“I literally had to ask Chan for your address,” Soonyoung whined. “Do you know how humiliating that was, having him look at me with that smug face. ‘Oh, man, Jihoon didn’t tell you he moved into that mansion with all of his music money?’ Annoying ass.” 

When still Jihoon said nothing Soonyoung scooted closer and adopted a rare, serious expression. “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Jihoon said. Outside the tall patio window, the stars glimmered. His throat worked. How to tell Soonyoung that he fundamentally felt, in his bones, that he didn’t belong in the outside world, that there was no longer a space for him in the sun?

“It’s not as bad as back then. I’ve been working a lot. I feel like I have a purpose. Sure sometimes I still wake up in the morning and I feel so…heavy. Alone. But it doesn’t matter because I _know_ things can’t go back the way they were. It’s like— I deserve this, you know?” 

In the quiet aftermath, the biting silence, Jihoon knew he’d said too much. “Forget it. I’m being dumb.”

“You’re not being dumb,” Soonyoung said. “You don’t deserve this— self-exile. Whatever the fuck. _Talk_ to Seungcheol. Come on, let’s call him right now!”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

“No offense, but you’re the last person I’d take serious advice from.”

He immediately regretted it the minute it left his mouth. Soonyoung shrank away a little like a neglected houseplant and he regretted it even more. 

“Sorry,” Jihoon murmured, dropping his head in his arms, scrubbing his nails through his hair. 

“You’ve really changed, huh,” Soonyoung said. He sounded small and so sincere. Jihoon had never hated himself more. 

“Look. This is what I do, I push people away for no goddamn reason. You don’t need someone like that in your life.”

As if he was proving something.

Things were silent except the steady white noise of the air conditioning. Jihoon worried at his lip and looked out the window again. He’d seen this coming, somehow.

“I’m gonna take off,” Soonyoung said. 

Jihoon had seen that coming too. Perhaps that was what he’d wanted after all.

Soonyoung looked on the precipice of a decision. It tipped one way and he leaned closer to Jihoon. “Listen, there's this thing some of my friends are doing lately. You know Pledis Androids?”

“Yeah, who doesn’t.”

Soonyoung ignored his tone. “I’ve heard the new OS update on the Companion model is super realistic. It’s like having a housemate around. Maybe that would work better for you than actually having to talk to— to people.”

He had avoided saying Seungcheol’s hallowed name. Jihoon sighed. 

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not… meant to be around other humans.”

Soonyoung wrapped one arm around Jihoon in a vice-like hug, his skin warm, his body solid. 

Jihoon had grown too accustomed to his isolation. His heart pounded under his skin, running a race against nobody.

“Humans are meant to be around other humans, Jihoon,” Soonyoung said, muffled.

They stayed like that for a few seconds, before Jihoon pulled away.

“Hope you feel better,” Soonyoung said. “Call me whenever. Try to talk to Seungcheol.” 

Somehow, Soonyoung was the same person from college. Silly, hopeful, reliable. Foolish. Foolish to expect Jihoon not to have been radio silent, not to have conned himself out of yet another friendship that had already survived so much. 

He ached. Turned his eyes to the black wall of the night, wondered how he’d turned out the way he had.

He knew he would not, could not try to talk to Seungcheol. Instead, he went to the Pledis website, his vision pathetically blurring, and made a purchase.

  
  


Under the plastic wrap the Android looked human. Like some male model slumbering for eternity. If at any moment a prince were to lean down and kiss its soft-looking mouth, it would give a start, sit up, and perhaps politely introduce itself. 

Jihoon had felt troubled when the delivery man had carted the big box in and laid it on the floor of the living room. He felt even uneasier when he peeked over the tall sides of the box and saw the perfect, slumbering golden face encased inside. Perfect except for a single mole on its left cheek. 

Something about that was unnatural. It occurred to him maybe it hadn’t been the best of ideas to take Soonyoung’s haphazard musings and run with them. But he supposed he could always return the Android to the nearest Pledis store and let them factory reset it, if things stayed weird. 

He took a deep breath for courage, skimmed the instructions manual, and followed the necessary steps to turn the Android on.

The box’s plastic door shrunk into itself with a pneumatic hiss. Jihoon sat back warily. A pink glow emanated from its maw. 

The Android sat up, its warm brown hair slightly ruffled, as if it had awoken from a midday nap. It blinked and looked around the living room. A circular pink light swirled at its temple, like a buffering wheel, then disappeared.

It turned its head slowly. Jihoon held his breath.

“Hi,” it said. It had a deep, pleasant-sounding, amiable voice. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

It has a lisp, Jihoon thought, startled. A slight one. Enough that if you heard it talk in a restaurant or in a store, you’d think it was human.

But it wasn’t. 

He realized the Android was waiting for his response. “Uh— hello.”

“You’re Jihoon.”

Jihoon was caught off guard again, sent into a tailspin. “How did you know that?”

“You ordered me on August 20th,” the Android said. It was talking fast now, overexcited like it had inhaled a tall cup of coffee before waking up. “I recognize you from your profile picture. They program it all in!”

“They?”

Its eyes crinkled up before it smiled, revealing too-pointy canines. Another calculated imperfection. Jihoon knew none of it was real, that it was all manufacturing and algorithms and machine learning and whatnot, but it felt as if the Android’s face was glowing from within. Lit by the sun itself.

“Pledis…you know, the— the company that built and programmed me?”

Was that sarcasm? “Uh, yeah, I know what Pledis is. Do you have, like, a name?”

“My name is Mingyu. Sorry, would you give me a sec?”

Jihoon didn’t have time to feel aghast at how natural the Android was in its words and its physicality. It swung a long leg around to the outside of the box, then another. It stretched its arms above its head and yawned loudly, then pushed itself up to a standing height.

“Jesus, you’re tall,” Jihoon muttered, dazed, craning his head up.

“By your standards, maybe,” the Android said cheerfully. It looked around the room, the swirling circle appearing back on its temple. 

Its gaze paused when it found the patio door. “I can go outside?” it asked, turning to Jihoon for confirmation. Like some sort of massive puppy.

“Well, I mean, yeah. Shouldn’t you— I mean, like, isn’t there… things I have to do to set….you up…?”

“It’s like… like grab ‘n go,” it said. Jihoon made a quizzical noise and a strange expression crossed its face. “Oh, did I use that phrase correctly?”

“Uh, not _really_.” 

The Android threw its head back like it was genuinely tickled, producing high-pitched small laughs that completely belied its appearance. Under any other circumstance, Jihoon would’ve found the discrepancy adorable. 

“Sorry,” it said, fairly gasping for air. “I j-just— your face.”

Then it made its way to the patio door, still amused. It fiddled with the door for a few seconds, then slipped outside.

“What the fuck,” Jihoon said, alone once more in the living room. The Android was standing in the middle of the abandoned garden like an overgrown statue. 

Thinking about it, Jihoon realized the patio and garden were the only truly imperfect parts of the house, besides the dust that coated nearly everything. 

And, of course, the car, which sat rusting outside in the driveway. That old heavy hurt in his heart that he would cart around forever. 

Breathe through it. He forced himself to forget about the car, returned to thoughts of the garden. Maybe all the dying plants out there had thrown it off and it was out there buffering again.

The Android turned and waved at him cheerfully, like it had eyes at the back of its head. 

“What the fuck,” Jihoon muttered again, sour. He disliked its easygoing, eager to please nature. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected or what he even wanted from this whole experiment. But he was certain it wasn’t this strange autonomous machine who was very unmachine-like, who seemed to come packaged with a personality of its own. 

He almost laughed at the idea. A robot with a personality. 

He flipped through the manual again and found that in his fugue haze he’d ordered a basic model. Not very customizable. He’d have to bring it into a Pledis store to slide around the settings.

He decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. He’d give it seven days. If he still took a dislike to it, he’d return it altogether.

He went back to his studio distractedly but wasn’t able to do any work. He felt anxious and strung-up, like he’d invited a stranger to have free range of his house. Which, technically, was exactly what he’d done.

Half an hour went by before he decided to check on the situation. The Android was still in the garden, sitting on the dense grass in the same spot where it had been standing.

Jihoon thumbed through the instruction manual. All of it blurred together. He decided he’d better go outside himself and figure what exactly the point of the Android would be. 

He slid the patio door open and stepped out, blinked owlishly in the intense sun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d come out here. He thought distantly that it was too hot. The vivid azure sky was peppered with cottony clouds. Fat bees looped lazily around the shaggy trellises that had spilled to the ground, brimming with vines and wildflowers and browning leafy plants alike. 

He made a face of irritated displeasure at the summer humidity, the teeming insects, the general chaos. The Android was cross-legged on the coarse grass in the midst of it all. A brilliant yellow butterfly rested on one of its long fingers, occasionally lazily flapping its patterned wings. 

The Android glanced at Jihoon as he approached and smiled its glowing smile. “ _Eurema hecabe,_ ” it said a little too loudly. 

The butterfly frantically flitted away. “Oh!” it said, startled, jumping a little. Its hair flopped down on top of its forehead with the movement. “That scared me a little, I think. How fast its wings flapped. I didn’t know it would be so sensitive to sound.”

“How’d you know what kind of butterfly it was?” There was sweat gathering on the back of Jihoon’s neck. It had been a minute and he already wanted to go back inside. 

“I have a lot programmed into me, and Internet capabilities,” it explained. “I have general ideas of things, I’ve never really— really, you know. Experienced them. I have no memory of what came before the box. Besides some implants Pledis gives all its Androids. This is technically the first time I’ve been outside. I have to admit, I didn’t know it would— it would feel like this. ”

“Feel…?”

The Android turned its face up. It smiled beatifically, took deep breaths, wiggled its fingers. 

“I didn’t know how nice sitting on the grass under the sun felt, or what birds sound like in real life when they sang. Right now…I feel…I don’t even have words for it. I can’t explain this sensation.”

It saw Jihoon’s face and laughed. “I have all kinds of things programmed in. Simulated sweat glands, tear ducts. And sensors embedded in my dermal layer. Thermal, somatic, everything. Even pain.”

“Why the hell would anyone want to put pain sensors in a robot?”

“As realistic as possible,” it quoted Pledis’s slogan brightly. Then it shoved its fingers into the dirt. The expression on its face could best be described as contemplative. It sifted through the garden soil, childlike, entranced, as if each second touching the earth was a new revelation. 

Jihoon didn’t like it. He didn’t like the idea of robots having thoughts. 

He wondered who had thought of manufacturing a machine that was so disturbingly realistic. The point of having ordered the Android was to have a housemate who _wa_ _sn’t_ a human, who wouldn’t be an overgrown child who he would have to babysit, who wouldn’t get in his way, who wouldn’t want to have weird conversations about feelings.

“Do you have tasks in mind that you’d like to set for me?” the Android asked him when he began to pace around. 

“I’m not sure,” Jihoon admitted. “Look. Full disclosure, I thought of ordering you because an old friend told me to, and I was being a dick to him so I felt bad. I guess I wanted some— some quiet presence in the house so I wouldn’t feel so alone all the time. I don’t know why I went and ordered an entire robot for that when I could’ve gotten a cat or something—”

“Are you going to deactivate me?”

Jihoon faltered. 

The Android was looking up at him. Its eyes were wide, its eyebrows furrowed, its mouth pursed and tense. Frightened…? 

“I’ve only been here for half an hour,” it said. “There’s so much more I would’ve liked to…”

Caught off guard, Jihoon watched the Android grow almost panicked. Its hands fluttered up to touch its own face, then back down to rest on the grass.

“The sun is so nice. I don’t want to leave. Wow, this feels strange. Kind of in my throat and in my chest. I think I’m scared?”

The expression on its face grew sharper when Jihoon still said nothing. A sheen developed on its forehead, like sweat. Its fingers knotted themselves into the grass, pulling fistfuls of green up from the dirt.

“I get it,” it said, looking away from Jihoon. “Could you give me one more minute? And then I’ll be ready to go.” Its voice practically cracked on the last word. 

Something strange rose inside Jihoon’s stomach.

“Jesus, calm down,” he said. “I’m not gonna… I won’t deactivate you.”

It was strange because he’d almost said _kill._ As in, I won’t kill you, as in, the Android was a living entity who _could_ be killed. 

“Oh,” the Android said. He frowned, then relaxed and smiled again, easy, as if he had never been afraid in the first place. His hands unclenched and the grass fluttered down. “Okay. Well, I’ll try not to be too much of a bother from now on. Thanks, Jihoon.”

“Yeah. Well. Whatever.”

“Mingyu,” the Android supplied, happily digging in the dirt again.

“Whatever, Mingyu,” Jihoon muttered. 

Confused, dazed, he went back inside. He didn’t know what had stopped him from simply getting on the bus, taking Mingyu to the Pledis store, and asking them to factory reset him. The Android’s disk would’ve been wiped painlessly. He would have no memory of what had transpired. 

Jihoon would have practically gotten away with murder. 

But he’d looked into the Android’s bright, defenseless eyes, and had found something very close to real human fear. 

  
  


The next few days consisted of Jihoon doing awkward dances around the second presence in his house. He actually began to sleep in his studio, kept ordering takeout. He didn’t bother to ask Mingyu if he ate, too. The concept was too bizarre to approach. 

Every time he left his safe abode, Mingyu was either in the living room tidying up whatever disorder he could find, or puttering around in the garden with the rusty tools the previous tenants had left in the shed. There was no longer any dust on the brilliant surfaces of the furniture. 

The undiluted cleanliness of his house turned Jihoon’s stomach even more. He didn’t even bother to go outside and look at what changes were occurring in the garden. He felt he’d made the right choice hunkering down in the studio like a hostage in his own home.

On the third night of utter isolation, though, the avoidance was forced to come to an end. A loud knock came at the door. Jihoon nearly dropped his guitar. 

“What,” he called, wrenching his headphones off, glued to his seat, dreading.

“Could I come in?” Mingyu’s husky voice was eager on the other side.

“Hang on.” Jihoon put his guitar down and approached the door. He swung it open far enough to poke his head out. “What.”

Mingyu bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “There’s nothing in the fridge.”

“What, you eat food?” he asked, alarmed. 

“Well, I can, but I don’t need to.” Weird. “I want to try to cook a recipe I’ve been researching.”

Jihoon made a face. “Why?”

Instead of answering, the Android tried to look into the studio. “Is this your occupation?” he asked eagerly. “A musician? Do you make money from it?”

“Kind of. Are you trying to ask me if you can go grocery shopping?”

“I’m not sure I should go alone. I’ve never been outside of this property by myself.”

“Right.” Jihoon sighed when Mingyu kept looking at him expectantly. “Give me a fucking minute. Go sit in the living room or something.”

“I also thought,” Mingyu said shyly, “I could— could buy some clothes?”

He’d been wearing the outfit that he’d been delivered in for the last few days, Jihoon realized belatedly— a loose-fitting blue T-shirt, nondescript black pants, Converse-like sneakers. The shirt was stained with grass and dirt.

“Oh,” Jihoon said, trying not to feel guilty. “Well, we can order that stuff online.”

“Can’t you also order the ingredients online? There’s stores that—”

“No,” Jihoon grumbled. 

“Okay. Are we going to drive there…?”

The car, rusting outside in the driveway. The old hurt always there. 

Jihoon shook his head, wordless, and slammed his door shut. Certain it would be an exceptionally taxing trip. 

  
  


On the bus, the holoscreens were playing an intense live feed of breaking news. Somewhat overwhelmed at the sudden deluge of information and people-noise, Jihoon buried himself in his phone. 

He couldn’t help but notice Mingyu’s reactions to whatever was happening on-screen when the Android suddenly leaned back like he’d been punched. 

“What,” Jihoon said, irritated, until he looked at the screen and glimpsed graphic images from some kind of overseas conflict. 

He glanced at the expressions programmed onto Mingyu’s face— tense, worried— and tapped him on the knee.

“We’re getting off in two stops,” he said. When Mingyu nodded but went right back to face the screen, Jihoon tapped his knee again.

“These things happen,” he said, indicating the screens. “Sometimes it’s too much. I don’t think… maybe it’s better if you didn’t look at it.”

A strange expression crossed the Android’s handsome face. Some kind of bewilderment. It shifted to determination. “Yes, but I want to know,” he said levelly, and faced the screens again.

“Your call,” Jihoon muttered. He tried to return to his phone but couldn’t help secretly watching Mingyu, whose face was blank now, hard to read and distant. 

Jihoon wondered how much of what Mingyu was seeing was actually new to him. Surely the Android received reports and updates from Pledis about relevant conflicts and recent news. And he’d mentioned those implanted Pledis memories. 

He began to trip himself up in detangling the circular logic of what Mingyu was programmed to express, and what he was organically reacting to. Organic in some sense, of course, not literally. 

“Am I allowed to take the bus by myself?” Mingyu asked a few minutes later, still watching the screens in his strange vacant manner.

“I guess,” Jihoon said carefully. But it occurred to him that Mingyu didn’t have a phone or any way of contacting him, in case something happened. 

Part of him scoffed at his own concern. But he couldn’t help but think of the way Mingyu’s eyes had widened in the garden three days ago, in a first breaking of his innocence, at the realization that at any moment his synthetic life could be snatched from him at a whim. It was unavoidable that Mingyu was naive in a very literal sense. He really hadn’t experienced much at all. 

“If you go to the Pledis website and enter my registration number from my box, you can track my location,” Mingyu said unprompted, guessing what Jihoon was thinking of. 

Jihoon gaped like a fish. “They really give you no privacy,” he said, mildly surprised both at Pledis’s audacity and at Mingyu’s absentminded intuition.

Mingyu shrugged and returned again to the screens, in a way that made Jihoon think perhaps he wasn’t nearly as innocent as Jihoon had figured. 

Their stop came soon. Relieved to be away from the holoscreens and the heat of other people, Jihoon cut off Mingyu’s lingering “Thank you!” to the conductor by rushing him out the bus door with a slight push to his shoulder. 

At the grocery store, Mingyu— back to his exuberant, loud self— was somehow charmed by absolutely everything, however minute or mundane. He looked around openmouthed at the entrance of the store, at the cart that Jihoon grudgingly let him push.

He even took his sweet time studying the labels of whatever ingredients he needed for his recipe. The pink processing circle swirled at his temple as he read. He looked unconvinced when Jihoon told him nobody actually read all the ingredients. 

At one point, a pigtailed toddler approached him and babbled some baffling nonsense up at him, and Mingyu crouched down and actually _c_ _ooed_ at her. The girl exchanged some nauseating babytalk with him for a few minutes. 

“She must’ve been around fourteen months,” Mingyu said to Jihoon delightedly, ignoring how disinterested Jihoon was trying to look. He kept stopping while pushing the cart and craning his head around to look for the girl again. “Just developing infant-directed language skills. Isn’t that amazing— oh! Ice cream!”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what ice cream tastes like,” Jihoon snapped. 

He’d mentally planned for a ten-minute trip. It had already been twice that. His patience for talkative people— and talkative Androids— was running very thin. 

Mingyu blithely ignored Jihoon’s sour tone. “Well, I know ice cream is sweet and creamy, and obviously cold. Although I don’t really— I don’t have a real benchmark for what that means. I can read people’s reviews of ice cream on food blogs, I guess. But I’d like to actually taste some.” 

He gave Jihoon a look that was likely meant to be read as pleading.

“Fine,” Jihoon relented darkly.

Mingyu chose a pint of mint chocolate ice cream. Jihoon rolled his eyes and thought, fucking frozen toothpaste with chocolate chips in it, honestly, but allowed it in their cart. 

Another wearisome bus ride. At the house, Mingyu carried in all three almost overflowing bags by himself. 

Jihoon prepared to make a beeline straight for the studio. He stopped when Mingyu set the ingredients down and busied himself near the stove. 

“Do you know how to use that?” 

“I’m watching a tutorial right now,” Mingyu said, his tongue poking out between his teeth. Sure enough, the pink light at his temple was spinning. 

He paused, though, and looked at Jihoon. 

“Or— do you want to show me?”

Jihoon hesitated. “No,” he said. Mingyu slumped a little, dejected. Although maybe Jihoon was imagining that. 

He didn’t go back to the studio, though. A strange force compelled him to sit on one of those ugly chairs, adjacent to the stove. He scrolled on his phone and pretended not to watch Mingyu cook. 

The Android took this as a good sign, his spirits perking up like a dog’s ears. Unfortunately, this also made him attempt to talk to Jihoon. Unprompted, ridiculous things like, “Uh oh, this grocery bag has a _leek_ in it,” then holding the vegetable up proudly and waiting for Jihoon to laugh at his horrific pun. 

Jihoon didn’t laugh. He groaned, disgusted, but Mingyu still threw his head back and laughed his fake programmed too-loud giggle and clapped his hands like a seal, enjoying himself entirely too much. 

“This is good,” Mingyu said later, sitting across from Jihoon. He was watching Jihoon pick at his fancy dinner like it was an Olympic sport. Jihoon wasn’t sure what exactly the dish was, some kind of egg noodle creation with lots of obscure vegetables and thin slices of chicken, but it _was_ good.

“Mm hmm,” he begrudged.

“Not the food,” Mingyu said. He smiled a secret smile and leaned close to Jihoon. 

“You don’t like being alone. You _like_ being around others. Like me.”

Jihoon’s mouth froze mid-chew.

“Why do you do it, then? Why do you make yourself be alone?”

His fork clattered to the bowl. 

Mingyu’s smile disappeared. He knew he had done something wrong, but he didn’t yet know what it was. 

A tiny, insistent miscalculation of emotions and situations that revealed him as solidly _not_ _human._ It might have been heartbreaking if Jihoon hadn’t been too busy feeling the old hurt settle in his throat, heavy and real as it had ever been. 

He felt his face strain. Retreated to his studio, and locked the door behind him. Hours later he thought he could still feel the tall presence outside, hovering, questioning, worried.

He didn’t open the door. He couldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i envision jihoons house to basically be the house of [gt dave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duyCHrAQdmg&t=10s) if there was a studio instead of a kombucha fridge LMFAO


	2. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beach by haruomi hosono, the days by patrick wolf, a new error by moderat

“A dog park,” Jihoon deadpanned to the phone, sure he had misheard.

“Uh-huh,” Soonyoung laughed. Something in Jihoon’s chest clenched, then relaxed. They hadn’t talked since that night Jihoon had ordered the Android, but Soonyoung was so natural and quick that it didn’t seem to matter. 

“Should I bring…”

“Yeah! I wanna meet him. My neighbor got one last week, I’ll ask if he can come along too. They’re really catching on. I think you’re ahead of the trend for once.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“So how’s it going? With him?”

He and Mingyu had settled into an uneasy schedule over the long, empty weeks. Jihoon worked most of the days away in the studio. Nights, he emerged and sat across from Mingyu at the dinner table to eat. Mingyu would fill the silence any way he could; one-sidedly prattle on about a plant he’d been learning about, or present some strange fact about a weird animal he’d seen on TV, or tell Jihoon a long-winded joke that was rarely actually funny. 

It was like he didn’t know how to quit or feel bad about the fact that he was giving and giving and Jihoon didn’t quite know how to reciprocate. But all the same, Jihoon knew he'd been growing used to Mingyu and his tiring, shimmering personality. 

“It’s alright,” Jihoon said. He shrugged, then realized Soonyoung couldn’t see him over the phone. “You know. Kinda weird.”

“Huh,” Soonyoung said, very clearly smiling from the way his tone picked up. “That probably means good. Tomorrow at nine, then.”

“My friend Soonyoung invited me to the dog park tomorrow,” he said at dinner, some weird steak creation with paprika and tomatoes. “His neighbor’s Android is coming too. So you can come.”

“Can— can we go without a dog?”

Jihoon shrugged. “Sure. Why not.” He went back to the steak, aware that Mingyu was working something out in his head.

“I didn’t know you had many friends,” was what the Android went with.

“A few,” he corrected Mingyu. “Old friends. From college.”

“College friends,” Mingyu repeated. He still looked thoughtful, watching Jihoon like he was studying a specimen under a glass slide. “Who are the others?”

Jihoon shrugged. “Don’t matter. Soonyoung is the main one.”

“Oh. I’m glad you’re reconnecting, then.”

Mingyu distractedly shoveled a too-large piece of steak into his mouth and nearly choked on it, the pink light at his temple pinwheeling. Jihoon started up unsure if he should help, or laugh. The coughing fit subsided and he gave Jihoon a sheepish smile.

“Well, anyway, I’m excited,” he said, stating the obvious in his endlessly enthusiastic way. “It’s good to be outside with other people.”

Jihoon didn’t have time to backtrack despite beginning to feel very anxious about the whole thing. That night, he had strange dreams involving Soonyoung and Seungcheol in the form of dogs who chased Mingyu around his studio and wrecked the place.

He was awoken from the chaos of his dream space by a tall shadow hanging over his bed. He jolted up in a cold sweat. 

“Jesus! What—”

“Morning,” Mingyu announced, clicking the light on. Jihoon cursed. 

“What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. We need to leave soon if we’re gonna be on time to meet Soonyoung.”

“You’re so fucking loud,” Jihoon groaned, smothering himself with his pillow. 

“Come on,” Mingyu whined, honest to god whined. “I’m really excited. I want to see dogs in real life.”

Jihoon didn’t respond because he’d dozed off again. His pillow was ripped away from him. Two warm hands shook his shoulders.

“Stop touching me,” Jihoon snapped, sitting up, jolted out of his blurred half-sleep.

Mingyu backed away quick, alarmed. But his chastised expression didn’t last long. He gave the room a judgemental once-over and tsked.

“It’s so dirty in here. I don’t know how you manage to sleep with _debris_ all over the place.”

“‘s not debris,” Jihoon retorted. “And get out of my room. This is a private area.”

“Fine,” Mingyu said, his mouth pursing slightly, his cheeks puffing out. _Pouting,_ Jihoon realized disbelievingly. The circle at his temple spun as he shuffled out of the room. Maybe he was filing the information to himself— _Jihoon’s room: private area. Keep out._

For some strange reason, it almost made Jihoon feel guilty. He put the feeling away for later examination.

When Jihoon emerged from his room marginally more awake, Mingyu was next to the main entrance wearing an oversized sweater and wide-leg pants. Jihoon didn’t really have the heart to point out to him that his clothes somehow made him look like a sixth-grader in an adult-sized outfit. He also had no idea how Mingyu had managed to order clothes that were _bigger_ than him. 

“The car?” Mingyu asked, hopeful.

Jihoon thought back to the last day he’d driven, and shook his head, hard.

“Why do you even have a car then?” Mingyu asked, amused. He shut up quick when Jihoon didn’t even bother to answer, headed right out the door instead.

Jihoon was unaccustomed to the chill in the air, and the dappled, fading color of the leaves. He was still practically a shut-in given that Mingyu had a bus pass now, and was free to go grocery shopping by himself. 

Mingyu startled him by taking off and bounding onto a small pile of leaves on the driveway. Unfortunately, he was a little too big and the leaves were slightly dry, and all that happened was that he landed on top of them and crushed the pile with a dismal _crunch_.

Jihoon burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. Mingyu’s crestfallen face gave way to a brimming beam of light.

“That’s the first time you’ve laughed,” he said, wonderingly. 

Jihoon tamped it down into a snort. He took a moment to look up at the sky, drank in the alternating brushes of cloud and sun.

“It’s beautiful, huh,” Mingyu said, although his eyes were closed. He was breathing in the tawny late-summer air, the last crisp exhalations of the burnished trees. Summer was dying. In its place, something new approached.

For once, Jihoon shared Mingyu’s sentiments.

  
  


The Android Soonyoung brought with him was named Minghao. He had a permanently bemused face behind his large glasses and a judgemental air that Jihoon immediately liked. Minghao ambled up to Mingyu and said, “Nice to meet you.” 

Mingyu stuck his palm out for a shake and temporarily spun into confusion when Minghao pushed his fist out. It clicked fast, though. 

“I’ve never had a conversation with another Android before,” he said. He led Minghao off to a bench.

The other Android’s doom, Jihoon thought. Presumably, Mingyu would be discussing his housemate’s strange habits and ranking all the dog breeds that were frolicking among the leaf piles. Then a tiny white mongrel of a terrier came strolling up to Mingyu and he looked almost frightened at first, tensing up a little. He stretched a large hand out, slow like he was trying to tame a giant horse, not pet a puppy that was probably one-tenth of his size.

The dog sniffed at him, wagged its tail, and licked his hand. Jihoon found himself grinning at the way Mingyu went soft, ridiculous, putty-like, a goofy smile spreading across his perfect face. 

“You _like_ him," Soonyoung noted, tearing him out of his reverie.

“Fuck off.”

“Told you it would be a good idea to have someone around. If he wasn’t there, you wouldn’t be out here with me, would you.”

“Well. Maybe not.” He looked over at the foggy hills beyond the dog park, toed the wet grass. “Sorry for being a dick that night. I’m rusty with people.”

“Yeah.” Soonyoung’s face was careful in its cheer. “Have you had anyone else over lately? Jeonghan’s been talking my ear off about wanting to see you.”

Jihoon made a face he hoped wasn’t too revealing, kept shuffling a foot. “Not really. It’s just me and the Android.”

“Did you know some people start relationships with their Androids?”

Jihoon stopped his shuffling and gave Soonyoung a _what the absolute fuck_ face. 

“Ah, don’t gimme that! I was— you know. I hear stuff.”

“Ugh,” Jihoon said, looking at Mingyu, who was busy telling Minghao one of his shitty jokes. To his surprise Minghao appeared to be enjoying himself, tilting his head back in slight, soft laughter. Mingyu lit up like a thousand-watt bulb at the reaction he’d received.

When he tore his gaze away from them, he knew Soonyoung had caught him looking. He didn’t know what to say, or what Soonyoung would say. The gaps in their communication had left pockmarked spaces in the way they perceived each other, how comfortable they were in each other’s presence. 

Part of him knew this whole thing was an exercise Soonyoung was doing. Poking at him just far enough to reach the meat of the dilemma. So he decided, why not go into it straight. Why not skip all the stupid, useless small talk about his dumb Android.

“You wanna ask about Seungcheol.”

Soonyoung exhaled. He’d been so subdued and he finally let the mask drop, his brows furrowing. Puffs of his warm air fanned out in front of them and dissipated.

“You really think you don’t need— you’re okay without talking to him?”

Jihoon didn’t answer. 

“You need closure, Jihoon. Even if you use Mingyu as your excuse for not leaving the house or not calling me. I need closure too. What happened was— it was terrible. But it wasn’t your fault, man. It wasn’t his, either. It wasn’t— wasn’t anyone’s.”

Stupidly, the backs of his eyes had begun to burn. To lessen the sting he looked at Mingyu, who was petting a big golden retriever. As if he’d sensed his gaze, Mingyu looked up, found Jihoon’s rigid face. His smile dropped. 

Jihoon marveled at that. He wondered what gears were turning, what sensors were activating. Was Mingyu’s operating system marking him down as upset? As resigned? Did Mingyu understand any of his human turmoils? Or did he think Jihoon was some strange, useless person who constantly cut himself off from connections, who ran in circles, who was so afraid of things going wrong again that he couldn’t even step outside his own house?

“It wasn’t my fault,” he said eventually, his voice raspy. “But I need to blame myself.”

Mingyu had begun to make his way over to them. Minghao trailed behind him, slightly confused, mostly along for the ride.

“I don’t get it.” Soonyoung was frustrated, his volume rising. “What kind of masochistic—”

“If I don’t blame myself, I’d blame Seungcheol. Easier to be mad at myself than at him.”

“Doesn’t make any fucking sense. You’re being so ridiculous.”

Jihoon had never, ever seen Soonyoung mad, and it was a little unsettling because it was riling _him_ up, even though he knew he had no reason to be angry.

“Why does it matter that much anyway? You only showed up and checked in once I bought that big ass house. Hoping to cash in, or?” 

“How could you even say—”

“What’s going on?” 

Jihoon and Soonyoung were both red-eared, glaring at each other. Mingyu looked from face to face, trying to get a read on the situation. He reached down and grabbed Jihoon’s hand. Jihoon’s brain stuttered at the warmth of his skin.

Mingyu held his hand like it was a pale, foreign bird, loose enough to let it flit away if needed. "Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes searching Jihoon’s expression.

“It’s fine,” he muttered, his throat dry. Knowing of course it wasn’t. 

Soonyoung sighed and it came out in an exasperated hiss. He kicked the grass hard enough that some of it flew up and Minghao raised his eyebrows, unimpressed at the display. 

“Lemme know when you realize how big of an idiot you’re being,” Soonyoung bit out, his nose red and his eyes glassy. “Come on, Minghao,” he called behind him. 

“Hey, see you around sometime,” Minghao said to Mingyu, mild and unconcerned. He half-smiled, like, _humans and their messy drama, what can ya do,_ and trailed after Soonyoung.

Jihoon realized Mingyu was still holding his hand. He wrenched away furious with himself and with the situation, and took off towards the bus station, not another word. Great going, Jihoon. Everything you touch turns to shit.

  
  


Weeks trickled slow. Fall grew muddled the way fall did. Jihoon in his studio licked his wounds, became nocturnal. He stayed inside. Instead of energizing him, something about the vast night sky these days was depressing. 

Mingyu noticed. Bless his mechanical heart, whirring away, his gushing endless sympathy. From the cavern of his studio round about two am, every night, Jihoon would hear the telltale knock. More often than not he would pretend to be busy. But then Mingyu would open the door, come in and flop down on the floor close to his chair, warmth radiating from him, his angelic face heavy with drowsiness. Eyes blinking slow and scrunched like a cat. His presence would somehow pull Jihoon up to the surface enough and they’d talk. Both of them. 

Jihoon hadn’t talked as much in a year as he had in the last few weeks. Mingyu was pulling things out of him with alarming ease. Never about Soonyoung, or Seungcheol. Sometimes about Jihoon’s work. Often about the world at large, which Mingyu was curious about but did not explore much beyond Jihoon’s tiny radius of influence. And Jihoon gradually began to ask him questions, too.

Do Androids sleep? Jihoon asked him once, and all Mingyu did was laugh, soft and pitchy. Do Androids dream? Do they conjure ideas for songs and lyrics in their dreams like people do? Do they mull on their thoughts, when the light-up circle on their temple begins to rotate? What are they thinking when they stare off into space, when no one is there to be spoken to, when the weight of their own memories threatens to come crashing down?

Despite himself, he was growing fond of Mingyu. No, more than that. He was becoming somewhat dependent on him, on these visits when Mingyu would be so calm, and present, and Jihoon could gather up all the fuzz collecting in his brain and release it in a half-conscious stream of thought. 

He talked to Mingyu about a lot. Almost everything— but not that.

Until one day when Mingyu knocked and it wasn’t sundown yet.

“Do you wanna come out,” his insistent voice said from outside the studio. He was trying to talk gentle, respectful, but it wasn’t quite working. He was nervous, Jihoon could tell. He began chattering to fill up the quiet, as was his habit. “Sorry, I was cleaning and I got bored and I always come in and talk but you never—” 

“Hey, you can come in. I’m in the middle of something.”

Mingyu pushed the door open. He was holding some piece of paper in one hand. He glanced around the studio, stalling. 

Jihoon smiled at him wryly. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“Well…” He reached out quick enough that Jihoon didn’t have time to dodge him. His large fingers landed feather-light on Jihoon’s forehead, brushed the dark, unruly hair away from his brow. 

“You always do that.” 

“Do what?”

“Try to touch my face,” Jihoon said. Wondering what code could be filtering through his systems now. “My shoulders. My hair.”

Jihoon reached up and caught his free hand. He brought it close, inspecting it. By all intents and purposes, it was a normal hand. Its weight and its touch was ordinary. He looked up to see Mingyu watching him with wide, searching eyes, an unguarded expression, lips parted slightly. 

Say something real, Jihoon, come on. Say something meaningful. 

“What’s in your other hand?”

Not what he’d wanted to land on, at all, but it came out anyway. Because he sensed, somehow, the slight guilt that was radiating off Mingyu. 

“Don’t get mad at me. Please. I wanted to— I just—”

Somehow Jihoon _knew._

“What’s in your hand.” 

Mingyu slowly unfurled his fingers. Jihoon was right. 

He was holding the faded crumpled Polaroid that had been shut away in the drawer of Jihoon’s bedside table. Taken five, six years ago now. High school-aged Jihoon, Seungcheol, and Bumzu sitting around a restaurant table, faces pale in overexposure. Jihoon’s own pink smile so wide and sweet that now, he almost couldn’t recognize himself. 

He looked at Bumzu’s ephemerally young face, felt the hurt clench inside him, rise up in his lungs, turn into red anger. 

“Fuck,” he said, squeezed his eyes shut. He stood up and wrenched the picture away from Mingyu’s grip. “What the fuck. This isn’t yours. You can’t— I told you not to go into my room! I fucking told you!”

Mingyu literally took a step back, his mouth slightly open in surprise. “That was ages ago— I— I wanted to—”

“Get the fuck out.”

“No. I won’t.”

Jihoon glanced up half aware of himself. _"No?”_

Mingyu was fixed with a kind of wild self-sacrificial determination, his eyebrows furrowed, his mouth pursed and small. He was hugging his stomach, his whole body drawn in like he was trying to make himself even smaller than Jihoon. The light at his temple was flashing red now, not pink, like a warning signal. His voice came out small and angry. 

“No. I want to know. I want to know what happened.”

“I’m under no obligation,” Jihoon said, clutching the photograph close to his chest, “to tell you _shit_."

“I want to know,” Mingyu said, swallowing hard. 

Jihoon’s stomach clenched. He’d thought he was healing by avoiding, when all he’d been doing, really, was pushing it down further and further inside of him. Now it was untenable to keep it hidden but he wasn’t ready. He needed to get out of the room, needed to forget Mingyu’s morose, guilt-inducing face. 

Jihoon pushed past blindly. His vision narrowed down to what was in front of him. The expanse of the living room. He found himself knelt in the garden, head tilted up at the ashen grey sky. Up there, it was a void. He wished he could wake up one morning and feel that inside himself. A clean slate. Leave all the bad shit behind. 

But it stayed and rotted. Always locked away in that drawer. This was going to happen, sooner or later. It was like the tide, the turn of a season. Inevitable. 

He watched the browning leaves grow sad and curled. Heavy with the weight of their own demise, they floated inescapably down to the ground. 

By the time his legs felt solid enough to carry him back inside night had fallen. No Mingyu puttering away at the stove or the vacuum, or singing some inane tune at the top of his lungs in the studio, or making a sly joke over Jihoon’s shoulder in the studio. 

In Mingyu’s absence, the silent mass of his house was formidable. He could scream at the top of his lungs here and nobody would hear him. If he died, his body might rot away forever, encased mummy-like in this tomb of isolation. The thought scared Jihoon into action. He checked his studio. He checked the bedroom. He even checked the garden again. Then it occurred to him. He went out front, exhaled in a quick rush of knowing anxiety. 

Sure enough, Mingyu was sitting in the driver’s seat of the rusting car in the driveway, his cheek resting on the steering wheel, looking up at the smudged nightfall. The window was rolled down.

“How’d you get the keys?” Jihoon asked from the entrance of the house.

“Bedside table,” Mingyu responded. His voice had never sounded so flat. So robotic.

Jihoon had done that.

He approached the car, stopped a few steps away. Mingyu avoided his gaze, still studying the spreading night.

“What are you thinking?” Jihoon asked.

His eyes traveled slowly to Jihoon’s face, where they darkened. A slight furrow appeared between his eyebrows. He glanced away from Jihoon like it burned to look at him. Jihoon wondered if this was the first time Mingyu was feeling anger. If it felt as jagged, raw, sour as it always felt within Jihoon. If he was already growing tired of the weight of it, as Jihoon himself had months ago. 

He wanted to say, you’re allowed to be mad at me.

Mingyu’s eyes flickered back to Jihoon’s face. Something filled his eyes, finally.

“I’ve never felt this way,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I like it very much.”

“I don’t like it either,” Jihoon said. He was tired. He was so tired. “But I still feel it, all the fucking time. Wish I could stop. But I can’t.”

He swung the car door open. Mingyu watched him, silent, expectant, still propped up against the steering wheel. It bothered him, the way Mingyu was looking at him and waiting. Almost resigned. Yes. A kind of half-hidden finally-giving-up resigned.

Don’t, he wanted to say. I think I’ll be ready, soon. 

Instead, he carded his hand through Mingyu’s soft brown hair. Mingyu closed his eyes. Jihoon traced his fingers across the troubled, pretty face. 

The circle spun at Mingyu’s temple, half-covered by his velvet hair. It was flashing pink again. Again, Jihoon wondered what Mingyu was thinking, but he was too scared to ask.

“Come inside.”


	3. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oblivion by grimes, first day of my life by bright eyes, like real people do by hozier

Mingyu did not come inside. For once, Jihoon was the one trailing after him. 

He was led to the garden, where Mingyu unloaded his tools from the shed in the darkness, silent. Night had fallen completely and Mingyu's honeyed face was awash in the pale blue of the moon, filtered through the clouds. 

When Jihoon asked what they were doing, Mingyu responded that they were planting winter flowers.

Jihoon hadn’t known there were plants that lived specifically in the dead of winter. There were many things he hadn’t known before meeting Mingyu that were now filling small spaces of his mind in a warm, comforting way, things gleaned from the dreamy haze of their studio conversations. He’d learned the histories of faraway cities Mingyu liked to read about online, how to start a fire in the woods, obscure facts about the movies he loved.

And Jihoon had learned that yes, Androids sleep. Androids even dream, in the way people do. Mingyu could remember conversations, faces, physical feelings in his dreams. He would wake up knowing which memories were false Pledis implants, and which were his and his alone since the day he’d awoken from the box in Jihoon’s living room. Despite this, none of it changed him. No matter what was taken away from him or added, he was still fundamentally Mingyu.

And right now he was troublingly quiet knelt next to Jihoon, his hair flopping over his eyes as he bent and packed dirt into a pot around a thick bulb. He broke the long silence himself. 

“Do you hate me?”

The question surprised Jihoon enough to make him drop the packet of seeds he’d been holding. Mingyu didn’t look at him, only ducked his head further, his mouth knitted in preparation for what was to come.

“Of course not,” Jihoon said. “Of course not. I’m— I’m frustrated. At myself. If anything, I hate myself.”

Mingyu looked at him at that, his eyes wide. 

“Don’t,” he said. 

He was so achingly open again, like he’d forgotten all of the fury Jihoon had projected onto him. Emerging from the slights and troubles unscathed. 

But then again, maybe he didn’t really feel any of it the way humans did, the way Jihoon did, beneath the skin. Tight and constricting, inescapable. Jihoon worried at his lip.

“Please,” Mingyu added, and Jihoon knew what he was asking. “I want to know. I won’t— see you any differently. I know you, Jihoon. I know you.”

Jihoon shifted on the solid ground. Goosebumps prickled his bare arms. In a fluid movement, Mingyu shrugged his cardigan off and wrapped him in it. It encased him completely, except his face.

"You'll get cold," he mumbled.

Mingyu sat back. "I want to hear the story," he said.

He felt weary, bone-tired… Where to start.

“The people in the picture,” Jihoon said haltingly. “They were my friends from way, way back. Middle school. Seungcheol, and Bumzu.”

“Which one’s Seungcheol?”

“One with the big eyes.”

“He’s the one Soonyoung wants you to talk to.”

Jihoon sighed. “Yeah.”

He took a moment to gather himself. Mingyu waited patiently, digging in the dirt with a trowel. 

“It— it, uh, happened near the end of college. All three of us were studying music. Together.” He rubbed at his faded jeans. Wondered how he could possibly explain it. 

“There’s this thing that— that sometimes happens. You might also feel it someday. Or— or recognize it at least. Where you’re so close with someone you can sit there, and not say anything, and it’s comfortable because you know what they’re thinking and they know what you’re thinking. You’re _their person._ And they’re yours. And if you’re sad or angry or whatever, all you need to do to feel okay is sit in their presence. Sit by them, and that’s all. That’s how the three of us were. We were each others’ people. But, uh. But then.”

Mingyu stilled. He nearly stopped breathing.

Jihoon dug down with his fingernails in the dirt, centering himself against the cold press of the earth. “But then. Well, it was— it was, uh, rainy season. We were out and it was late, I don’t remember why. But I was driving. And it was bad, storming real bad. Bumzu thought we should wait it out. But Seungcheol and me, uh, we— we wanted to get back to the dorms. So I— well.”

He closed his eyes. “I started driving us home. It was fine. But then, uh, there was a truck on the other side of the road that didn’t see us. And Bumzu, uh, he, uh—”

He shook his head. The words stopped coming. Instead, there was the hurt again, raw as that night had been in the cold, fingers and face numbing. He bent over on his elbows and shuddered through it, not knowing if he was crying or struggling for air. 

Warmth encircled him. Mingyu rested his chin on top of his head, enveloping him entirely. 

“Breathe through it,” Mingyu whispered in his calm voice. “Breathe through it.” 

He wondered if Mingyu could understand a fraction of what he was feeling. Mingyu had never had a Bumzu or a Seungcheol. He’d never come tumbling down from his own doing, irreversibly damaged deep within himself. Damaged in a way that wasn’t mechanical. In a way that couldn’t be fixed in a laboratory or a factory. 

But still, Mingyu hugged him close, trying to understand, and for the moment, it was enough. 

  
  
  


The next morning, Jihoon emerged from his studio and blinked away the haze in his eyes, unaccustomed to the brightness. He’d never really hung around Mingyu before sundown. The very contours of the house were alien in the sun. He was reminded of the morning the Pledis box had been deposited in the living room and was grateful for how much they'd both changed since then.

Mingyu was reading a book on the sofa. His skin glowed bright in the daylight but when he looked up and saw Jihoon he was careful, blank, like he couldn't get a read on what he was expected to do. He skirted around Jihoon somehow, gave one-word answers and couldn't look him right in the face. Like some spooked horse. Too different from his usual loose, funny self in the studio. 

Jihoon hoped to god nothing had shifted. He knew he had to apologize. He told Mingyu to come to the studio, sit in his usual spot _._ Jihoon wanted to play a song for him, something short and peaceful on his acoustic guitar that he’d been mulling over the past few nights. He wasn't used to performing live. Most of the music he'd shown Mingyu had been raw tracks from his production software.

He felt the rough metal strings of his Gibson against the pads of his fingers, positioned himself. Began.

There was something about the ending of the piece that had been eluding him, but as he approached it, he made a small improvisation and knew it was beautiful. A little sad, a little tranquil. Things seemed to become clear, sometimes, in the morning.

When the short passage was over and it was silent once more, Mingyu gazed up at Jihoon so open, unaffected in his gratitude. It almost made Jihoon feel bad all over again. Mingyu trailed his hand on the inlaid mother-of-pearl dove near the neck of the guitar. The circle at his temple flashed pink. 

"It's pretty."

"The song or the guitar?"

"Both," Mingyu laughed. Then said, "Thank you."

Later when Jihoon's stomach began to grumble, he trailed behind Mingyu into the kitchen, hovering at his elbow as vegetables and spices and noodles were procured. “I want to help,” Jihoon said, fumbling, when Mingyu looked at him quizzically. The pink circle spun. Mingyu broke out into a brilliant grin, his canines poking out.

“Seriously? You get so glazed over when I talk about my culinary stuff.”

Of course, Mingyu had noticed. “I don’t get _glazed over,_ ” Jihoon protested. Mingyu smirked, his mouth pursing neatly, and directed him to boil the noodles, tucking his chin neatly onto Jihoon's shoulders to monitor his progress. 

Happily, Jihoon complied.

  
  


A few days later, when he’d thought they’d both moved on, it reared its ugly head again. 

They were outside in the garden checking on Mingyu’s plants together. It wasn’t a particularly serene night. There was a deceitful wind that slapped at Jihoon’s cheeks and snuck under his thin hoodie. Dark clouds gathered above, but through the tall window, he could see the yellow sofa and the empty living room and knew he'd rather be out here with Mingyu.

Mingyu turned to him while deadheading a pot of snowdrops, his fingers moving precisely. Jihoon was distracted by a smudge of dirt on his nose and sorely wanted to reach out and wipe it away, but then he asked, “Has Soonyoung called lately?”

Jihoon’s sated calm broke. He sat back on his haunches and frowned.

“No.”

“You’re doing it again,” Mingyu noted gently, still thumbing through the white flowers. The wind picked up, lifting his hair off his forehead.

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. I guess...Cutting yourself off. I think… hey, I don’t want to talk about this any more than you do. I think— I think Soonyoung was right.”

What would you know, Jihoon was instinctively tempted to bite back, his defenses closing in on him as a reflex.

“I need time,” he said, helpless. Tried not to make his voice rough. He scrunched his nose because he felt the anger and the hurt rising and needed to push it back somehow.

Mingyu didn’t look up from his flowers. “Why are you so afraid of talking to Seungcheol? Are you scared of what...what he thinks of you?”

The wind howled. Rain was beginning to come down in fat, bewildered drops that slapped his forehead and the endless stretch of the patio door. The chill was permeating. He knew Mingyu could feel it too. 

He knew Mingyu could feel most things, but probably not this, not the heavy weight that crouched on Jihoon’s chest. This was distinctly human, and he was compelled to try to explain.

“I can’t,” he heard himself say. “I don’t— I wouldn’t know what to say. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want to talk to me either. But it’s just.” 

He felt hotness on his face, his ears burning, his throat expanding, choking him. Mingyu’s soft, earnest face gazed at him, just gazed, so open and kind, and he had to force the words out. 

“Sometimes it gets to me. I feel so guilty and alone. I need to scream, sometimes, I need to hold someone and scream. And that person has to be Seungcheol, but it can’t be. Even though he needs to hold me and scream, too.” He laughed and swiped at his face. “You know? It’s hard to explain. I can’t really…”

Mingyu put the pot of snowdrops down. His hands were warm, large. They engulfed Jihoon’s, a blanket swallowing the cold whole. “Tell me.”

He looked at Mingyu and Mingyu looked back with wide eyes, the light of ten thousand stars, so bright and giving, so concentrated on the effort to understand something he _couldn’t possibly._ Jihoon was so desperately afraid of losing something he did not yet fully grasp. Because what if Mingyu didn’t understand? Then something would be irreversibly broken between them. And Jihoon would lose yet another person.

He was cut open, as if Mingyu had seen something he shouldn’t have, something that Jihoon should’ve kept to himself. He stood up. He watched Mingyu’s face fall as he said the words, even though they sounded wrong, even though it shattered him to say them. Even though he wished with his whole being that they weren’t true.

“I can’t,” Jihoon said. “You wouldn’t understand how it— how it feels. You’re an Android.”

He took a sort of broken interest in observing the way Mingyu straightened and stood, the soft curves of his face dropping off into angular nothingness. 

Maybe they were always wearing masks, all of these robots. Maybe it was as simple as a line of code.

“I know,” Mingyu said. Too flat, his mouth a hard line. It didn’t suit him. His voice was strange and dead under the sound of rain on the earth. 

He was standing at his full height, something he never, ever did. The ferocity of the storm was drenching him, spattering water on the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t blink. The light at his temple was flashing, still pink, flickering on and off and on and off. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Jihoon repeated. It was almost automatic, and he wasn’t sure why he said it, and then Mingyu looked surprised as well, so he went inside and turned the stove on aimlessly just to do something. 

He ignored Mingyu following him, tracking water inside. Felt the tense form hesitating at the mouth of the kitchen, watching Jihoon, wary. 

Something had been broken. They’d shattered it near dead. 

“I don’t think this is working,” Jihoon murmured almost to himself. He couldn’t quite look up from the stove’s blue flames because he knew he was lying, but he didn’t know what else to say. “I think…”

“You want me to go.”

He finally looked up at Mingyu, which was a mistake. Mingyu wasn’t angry anymore. Instead, he looked vaguely distressed at the turn things had taken. His wet dark hair was dripping onto his eyelids and his cheeks. His hands twisted into each other. He took a few shallow breaths, and it occurred to Jihoon that he looked to be on the edge of some deep, looming panic. 

The circle at his temple glowed scarlet. It blinked on and off. Off for a little too long, jolting in its absence. Eventually, Mingyu smiled with those too-sharp canines, the ones that Jihoon had grown so fond of seeing. His face wavered slightly. Painfully. 

“Don’t you think I’ve grown tired of it, too?” he said, his soft bare voice like a hand pressing into Jihoon’s chest. The smile slid off his face as if by accident. His eyes shone. “I mean of the… the way I am.” 

He swallowed. Like he was fighting to keep something down, but it kept rising up unbidden. A dark, hurt expression flitted across his face, one Jihoon had never seen before, but he tamped it all back down. 

“I can see the way you look at me. I can tell what you’re thinking. You think I…I can’t understand you, because I don’t belong here, in your world. Because my intelligence is artificial.” 

He came to the excruciating conclusion. “Because I’m— _I’m_ artificial.”

As if a wave had finally shattered through the clean wrought silence of the ocean. Mingyu’s expression crumpled. He was crying, for the first time. Jihoon remembered him blithely saying in the garden all those distant months ago, _as realistic as possible._

“Don’t,” he said, but he couldn’t hear himself. 

“I’m sorry for how I am, I can’t help it,” Mingyu choked out. He reached up to his eyes as if confused and embarrassed by his own tears. The red circle blinked slowly. On, off. On. Off. His shoulders shook. Don’t, Jihoon tried again, just breathe through it, but nothing came out.

“You told me I’d feel it someday. I feel it, I do, I feel it. I felt it the minute I woke up and I saw you with that closed-off sad face and I thought, he needs me. But I need you too. I’m your person.” 

He pawed at the wetness on his face, shuddered and made more broken noises, turned away from Jihoon. Jihoon’s hearing tunneled out. Except for his heart thrashing against his eardrums, and the storm. Vengefully dashing itself onto the roof. A roll of thunder sang. The wind pounded its fists on the too-large windows.

All he could think was, stupidly, _Mingyu’s plants are going to drown._

The plants. The plants in the dirt that Mingyu had touched so reverently. The moon, which bathed his contented, steady face blue and tranquil. Jihoon had forgotten about what excruciating and beautiful things existence could possess. 

Mingyu was still there. Framed by a halo of light diffusing from his body. He breathed and moved and maybe he even felt. Real things. Real things. 

“Your plants,” he said to Mingyu. 

He turned the stove off, strode across the kitchen. He grabbed the soft fabric of Mingyu’s sleeve, then his jaw, tilted Mingyu’s face down towards him. “We have to put a tarp on top of them, or cover them with something else.”

“But water is good for them.” Still sniffling in distress. “Even rain.”

Jihoon petted his hair, fond. “Sometimes,” he said, “rain can overwater plants. It could kill them.” 

He felt a soft wonderful hurt when Mingyu followed him outside without saying anything more, even though Jihoon knew he didn’t really understand the concept of death by overwatering. How could he? Mingyu overwatered things, and brought them back to life. 

Kneeling in the wet brown earth of the garden, they pulled a faded blue tarp over their flowers. Jihoon looked to Mingyu, found his brow still furrowed, his mouth in a hard line, still crushed in red-eyed misery. 

Mingyu belonged to this world. He was as natural as the first flower, the last frost. He smelled like fresh dirt and something sweet. The agonizing tender rebirth of winter into spring. 

Jihoon brushed Mingyu’s slick hair from his eyes, the same gentle way Mingyu always did to him. 

He pulled Mingyu in by the back of his damp neck. Then he broke away, watched the pink circle swirling and swirling. Felt the large hands come up slowly, slowly, and cup his face. “You’re here,” he mumbled against the steady press of Mingyu’s warm, soft mouth.


	4. Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> avril 14th by aphex twin, first love / late spring by mitski, annie and owen by dan romer

It wasn’t good. He knew it from the minute he stepped into the cafe and Seungcheol was blank, like he didn’t recognize Jihoon. 

“Well,” Seungcheol said, looking up through his eyelashes when Jihoon sat.

“Hey.” He fought to keep his voice casual. His stomach was twisting. His fingers knotted into one another, and he thought of Mingyu, who was anxiously waiting outside. He made himself straighten up in his seat. If he was gonna take it he'd take it on the chin.

“Took you long enough.”

Seungcheol had gone blonde. It didn’t soften him. If anything his eyes were more stark against his face, the tender warmth Jihoon remembered in them nowhere to be seen. He wore his face like armor, like he always had when he was upset, settled into an unreadable stare. 

But Jihoon knew him. Knew that on the inside, Seungcheol felt as panicked and scared as he did.

“Good to see you too," he said. Don't fuck this up, Jihoon.

They looked at each other for a few seconds. 

“Why’d you call, Jihoon? Couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie?”

"I wanted to see you."

"Why now."

"Why now?"

"Yeah. Why, after not fucking showing up to the funeral, after two years of not returning my calls and my texts. You had your head buried in the sand. Why shake it off now?"

Jihoon looked up at the ceiling. It was easier than looking at Seungcheol's face.

"I got an Android, about a year ago."

“So you bought a friend, cus you lost all your own?”

He’d never been on the receiving end of Seungcheol’s blistering indifference but he shook it off. I deserved that, he thought. 

“He’s— he’s really been helping me. Thinking things through and stuff.”

“It took a fucking _Android_ to get you to come talk to me?” Seungcheol’s eyes were liquid fury now. “You couldn’t figure that out yourself?”

Jihoon didn’t know which side was up. He flailed for the surface. “Seungcheol, no, it’s not like—”

_“Why are you here?”_

“Because I want to apologize.” He was aware they were making something of a scene, but he didn’t care. “I’ve been lost and stupid but I know that, now. I'm seeing...I'm seeing outside of myself. And I’m sorry. I should’ve just talked to you. We should’ve— should’ve grieved together. I shouldn’t have forced myself away and gone silent and— and—”

Breathe through it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, shaky. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I know that’s not enough. But it’s a start.”

Long seconds passed. He chanced a look at Seungcheol, whose face was still blank except for a tiny furrow between his eyebrows. “You’re right,” Seungcheol said. For the first time a crack showed.

Seungcheol frowned, and when he spoke next, his voice was hardly a whisper. “It’s not enough.”

  
  


Mingyu fluttered around him at the house, anxious, lost. He didn’t know how to attend to this specific breed of Jihoon-grief. Neither did Jihoon himself. He almost felt sorry about it, but he stayed curled up for days in his big chair in the studio, the only safe haven of the house besides Mingyu.

His projects rotted away in their sad unfinished files. He hardly ate. His body was a shell, a walking, talking shadow. Strange, to have been so alive just days ago. At nights, sometimes, Mingyu sat in the studio, in his regular spot, but couldn't make Jihoon talk.

It wasn't that Jihoon didn't want to talk. He just didn't have anything to say. His mind curled at the edges, forlorn, grasping for something. He was at once barren in sadness and brimming with anger. Anger at himself. Anger at Seungcheol, for refuting what Mingyu had convinced him would be the correct thing to do. But how to express this? How to tell Mingyu: Perhaps this world wasn't meant for me, and I was never meant for this world?

Lately Jihoon couldn’t read Mingyu's face. It was like on the bus that one time, when he’d been watching things so horrible that all he could do was force this utterly dull, empty look into his eyes.

He didn't blame Mingyu for giving him the wrong advice at the wrong time. Sending him deeper into this nameless chasm. Sometimes he didn't even blame himself. Maybe the world was just like this. Complete in brokenness. People groping around in the dark, some stumbling into the daylight. Some doomed to the shadows.

“It’s not your fault,” Jihoon whispered, finally, one night. But the circle at Mingyu’s temple blinked scarlet, a single flash. A warning.

“I’m here,” Mingyu said. He looked haunted, though, like he’d also been in that car with Jihoon, felt the backhanded slap of Seungcheol’s cold fury. 

“I’m still here.”

  
  


It bristled. Became an arduous uphill climb towards the simple comfort he used to feel in Mingyu’s presence. Jihoon could feel that things had changed. He knew Mingyu could, too. 

Mingyu's voice wasn’t loud anymore. He stopped coming to the studio. He hardly took up any space in the house. He’d gone muted, faded, even as the winter gloom was melting away outside. That hurt the most.

The house grew its grime once more. In the sloping shadows of the walls, the ceilings, the empty sofa, dust collected, thick and colorless. 

  
  


One day Jihoon woke up before sunrise, his sleeping schedule so fucked it had chased itself into almost-normalcy once more. He shuffled outside the studio, saw his own reflection in the window where the night was just being coaxed into lifting.

His gaunt face, the piling shadows beneath his eyes. Strange. He had a body. He had a face. He had thoughts. What was he thinking?

He was thinking to himself, Look, Jihoon, that's you. You’re still living in the world. You’re still here.

He didn’t tell Mingyu. Didn't even know where Mingyu was, maybe sleeping on the dirt outside curled next to his pots for comfort, or in Jihoon's bedroom, under the sheets that smelled like him.

He slipped out, real silent. The navy sky was just brushed with orange and pink near the edges as he got onto the bus. Scattered, inky birds, faraway above him, called to each other as they made their way home. The trundle of the bus didn't send him to sleepy oblivion as it sometimes did. Instead, it woke him up, made him sit straight and notice the surroundings. Commuters piled on with their briefcases, some on phones, arguing with their bosses, or leaving good morning messages to their kids.

A girl and her baby sister sat next to him, wide-eyed, surveying their fellow passengers. The baby looked at Jihoon and smiled. Jihoon smiled back, the tensing of the muscles so foreign to him now, and waved.

He got off at random and wandered around town. He tried to close his eyes and imagined how Mingyu saw things, through those loving, attentive eyes. The everyday wonders of being alive. 

Jihoon watched frost drip itself invisible from the trees, melt down into the roots of the new budding life. He heard sparrows calling to each other across telephone poles. He smelled the first warm traces of baking bread, listened to couples arguing, school children laughing, faint music through other people’s headphones. His shoes on the damp sidewalk squeaked as he walked slow, just breathing.

He visited the dog park and watched the dogs chase each other and bark and roll around on the dewy grass. Watched their owners fill their spaces, so happy and deliberate. 

And he thought about Mingyu. Imagined coming here with him again, maybe with a dog of their own. Moving out of the house like they’d talked about weeks ago, buying a tiny cottage with a massive garden, inviting all their friends over and laughing and joking together. Then Mingyu and him, sitting outside under the sky and the stars, not needing to say anything at all. 

This is the world, Jihoon thought. This is what it is, to be human. I’m here. I’m here. I belong here.

  
  
  


It was like he’d had a premonition. When he came back, Seungcheol was sitting out by the gate to the house, softening in the growing sun.

“Hey,” Seungcheol said, somewhat wary. “Got your address from Soonyoung. Fucking hell. Mr. Bigshot Music Man.”

“You’d hate it in there," Jihoon said. "It’s like living in a Scandinavian hospital.”

Then Seungcheol was smiling. Cautious, subdued, but still.

"Figured I'd give this another shot?"

"Why?"

He shrugged. His shoulders had gotten broader, his jaw more tense. But he laughed a little and it was the same laugh Jihoon had always known, the sudden, unbridled amusement.

"Because life is fucking short, Jihoon."

Jihoon apologized, said he'd deserved what Seungcheol had dished out. And Seungcheol agreed but he said it just turned out he’d needed time, too, and he couldn’t stop thinking how they’d left things off. That maybe there was still time to heal together. 

They went over their regrets, their grievances. Their anger. The lingering hurt.

But then it was so easy, so simple, to slip back into the unpracticed ease of being friends. They both knew Bumzu was there, watching over them. They left things off at a gentle impasse, but Jihoon was hopeful. He wasn't going to let this go again. And, he figured, neither would Seungcheol.

It occurred to him only after Seungcheol left, later, that Mingyu was being awful quiet. It wasn’t like him to keep out of exciting action and listen from a distance. If Jihoon knew him at all, he should’ve been watching from the window, then stumbled onto the scene in his awkward charming way and wiggled himself into Seungcheol’s heart within the minute. 

A little unsettled, Jihoon went in, checked the studio, the bedroom. Even the garden, with its inert, sleeping buds and the pots of dozing greenery that they’d planted together. And finally the car.

Mingyu wasn’t anywhere. 

Jihoon wondered if it would be worth it to go around to the dog park, or the grocery stores, or all the restaurants and cafes that Mingyu loved so much. Then he remembered something Mingyu had said to him ages ago, so distant from the present that it felt like a dream. _If you go to the Pledis website … you can track my location if you need to._

He found the Pledis box in the garage, copied down the registration number. He entered the website with trembling fingers. 

Mingyu popped up after a few excruciating seconds. He was at a Pledis store. 

A wave of fear gripped Jihoon so tight and whole that for a second all he could do was breathe, staring at the little pink dot on the map that signified Mingyu. He thought of all the times at the very start, when he’d absently kept _factory reset_ at the back of his mind like a magic charm that would undo everything. As if Mingyu wasn't a whole being, just a file on his computer that he could press a button to wipe, and _boom_. That was it. Clean slate, file erased, no lingering presence that would haunt him.

Mingyu, apparently, had also kept that idea with him. Now he was invoking it, because Seungcheol had been some kind of fucked up final Turing test, and he’d thought he’d failed it.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t. 

Jihoon leapt up, grabbed his car keys and the nearest jacket, couldn’t breathe. He tripped over his own feet in his haste towards the car. 

He thought of waking up next to Mingyu in the late snap of winter when the earth had begun to flutter awake. How his steady overwhelming warmth had been the one thing that had broken through to him. How he had kept giving Mingyu so many reasons to hate him, not to trust him. 

How he himself had mistrusted for far too long. 

And still Mingyu had tried and tried, unfailing, to show Jihoon how much he could feel, how deeply human he was. 

Jihoon got in the car. His hands shook on the steering wheel. He couldn’t move. His heartbeat was jagged. 

He forced shallow breaths, imagined Mingyu all curled up and slouched with his terrible posture in the passenger seat. Giving him his unbridled, effervescent smile, canines gleaming, his eyes soft and warm. 

Saying, maybe, I’m here. Don’t worry. Don’t panic. I got you. Breathe through it.

He started the car.

  
  
  


He ran into the store, a ridiculous sight, wearing a puffy overcoat three sizes too big, tearing up, sweaty. His lungs were on fire and his knuckles were white from his death grip on the steering wheel.

The lady at the front desk was visibly taken aback by him, stuttered out the bland company greeting.

“Was there an Android,” he panted over her faltering words, “who checked himself in?”

Openmouthed, she pointed off to the left, down a long bare hallway.

Jihoon sprinted. The room he burst into was sterile white, empty. Like the house. 

At the center of the room, Mingyu was strapped to a table, his eyes closed. The technician who was supposed to be present in the room to perform the factory reset was nowhere to be found. The circle at his temple was white. Blank. Nothing. 

“Fuck,” Jihoon gasped. The room spun. He ran, knelt next to Mingyu. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” He thought, hysterically, of the very first day, Mingyu deeply asleep in the box, as if he would never wake up again. 

The circle flashed its pink. Mingyu’s eyes fluttered open. 

For a terrifying moment, he looked up at Jihoon, his dark eyes completely blank. Jihoon wanted to scream in his face. What did you do. What the fuck did you do.

Then he frowned. “Jihoon?”

Jihoon slumped over, nearly wept with relief. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Mingyu shut his eyes again. “Don’t try to stop me,” he mumbled. “Please. I’m sorry it didn’t work. I was wrong about everything.”

He was working quickly to unstrap Mingyu from the table, but Mingyu was listless and uncooperating. Jihoon stumbled over his own words in his panic. 

“No, Mingyu, Mingyu, you weren’t wrong. Seungcheol— Seungcheol came back to me. He came back. We— we talked. Everything is gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

Mingyu’s eyes opened. His temple light flared alive, spinning, joyous. 

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Jihoon said, bleary through his tears. “Yeah. That’s not important though. That’s not important. That’s not why I’m here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You fucking idiot, I’m here because of _you_ ," Jihoon sobbed. “Life is chaotic and weird and beautiful and I need you. And I’m not going to let you go. You fucking idiot.”

Mingyu stayed limp and confused like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Jihoon pulled him up to a sitting position with a Herculean effort. He sat down on the table next to Mingyu, grabbed his uncomprehending sad face in both his hands. 

“You’re my person,” Jihoon said. 

Mingyu looked at him, unsteady, his face screwing up. He raised his hands and they covered Jihoon’s hands. 

“Do you—” Mingyu stopped and took a shaky breath because he was beginning to cry now, too and he was trying hard to fight it. “Do you mean that?” 

“You were meant for this world,” Jihoon breathed, “with or without me. But now you’re stuck with me. Because you belong here, with me. You’re so alive. You’re more alive than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Mingyu finally went to pieces. He buried his face in the crook of Jihoon’s neck and sobbed his heart out, choked up words that Jihoon couldn’t understand. Jihoon gripped him tighter than he ever had before, feeling warmth thundering through him. Jihoon was laughing, now, in a way he couldn't control, elation and love pouring out of him. He felt present and awake.

He felt alive. 

“Breathe through it,” Jihoon murmured, closing his eyes, and Mingyu laughed too, all watery and muffled, and he didn’t need to say anything else. Because Mingyu knew what he was thinking.

This is the world. This is what it is, to be human. You’re here. You’re here. You belong here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u so very much for reading! find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/sunsburst) :)


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